Doug, that was a long email but I will try to answer your questions with
another long email.
I am very new to the meteorite collection and just fell in love with them
when I purchased my first set of these from Martin Horejsi. My experience
with him was so pleasant that I just assumed that others in the meteorite
community will be just like him. He didn’t want me to buy anything but
asked me to learn about them before he would even consider selling them to
me. I guess I should have known this since he is a professor by day and
meteorite collector by night. After I spent 3 days learning about
meteorites and their classification with him at an education event, he
sent me home with the briefcase full of meteorites and told me to pay when
I get home and think about it again. He told me that he will take anything
and everything back if I ever decided that I have made a mistake in
purchasing them.
Back to Martin Altman and Stefan, it was a different experience. Martin
will tell great story about each meteorite and kept suggesting to buy it.
I was willing to look at these well described meteorites since I was
assured of full refund if I return them within 3 weeks (their website
clearly states that any customer can ask for full refund for any reasons
within 30 days). They asked me to pay them full amount by wire (which
should have been my first warning sign) before shipping them but they
again assured me that I can return anything within 3 weeks. I contacted
Martin back within hours of my receiving the meteorites to let him know
that I plan to return 2 out of 9 meteorites because they didn’t look how I
imagined from the picture and their description. I also did a bit of
research on them and was not thrilled with their quality.
I am not sure if the meteorites are fake but they are certainly very low
quality for the premium price I paid for these. I have since gotten to
know Greg Hupe Adam Hupe and Michael Farmer. They each have given me
unconditional 30 days money back guarantee and I have really enjoyed
working with them.
I tried very hard to resolve the issue with Martin and Stefan but Stefan
didn’t want to resolve anything and told me Martin has no authority to
return anything but can only sell stuff on his behalf. I am still hoping
that Meteorite community can put enough moral pressure on Stefan and
Martin Altman to do the right and fair thing.
Just to answer your question specifically, I wanted to return Lunar Kreep
because it just doesn’t look right to me and it was never touched,
polished or modified in any way.
Martin had one Urelite that needed classification but Stefan didn’t want
to slice the piece for classification so he hammer broke a piece to send
for analyses. Martin suggested that they should polish the broken surface
before sending it to me along with polishing one other green Lunar
meteorite that desperately needed polishing. I simply agreed what Martin
said he needed to do before shipping with these meteorites. Irrespective,
I am not even returning the Urelite specimen that was polished anyway.
I think it was simply a greed and large sum that blinded them of their
morals and obligations. Stefan and Martin Altman finally decided to sell
their soul for large sum of money. IMCA board tried very hard to get them
to honor their obligations but they refused which really makes me think
that what they sold me are either fakes or very low quality stuff that
they won’t ever be able to sell again.
Warm regards,
naveen
Naveen Jain
Founder - Moon Express, Intelius, InfoSpace
Board of Trustee – X Prize Foundation, Singularity University
http://www.linkedin.com/in/naveenjainintelius
From: MexicoDoug [mailto:mexicod...@aim.com]
Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 11:12 PM
To: Naveen Jain
Cc: meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com
Subject: Re: Martin & Stefan Kicked out of IMCA for their illegal behavior
Hi Naveen,
So much for my request of an off-list info request ... so be it ...
now that it is out in the open, there is absolutely nothing I see that
would indicate that there is a question of authenticity, or quality
however that would be defined - which is my sole worry. So I should
stop right here. But I'm stubborn and will continue ...
Unless all bridges are irreparably burned, I hope there is still
something amicable that can be worked out to lessen the burns.
You say: "I am still in shock because I expected the meteorite
community to be small, friendly and ethical."
As a community it is. But people are getting into disputes all the
time. You can research it on this list and see flames that have flown
throughout the years. Intelius is reliable, but not much else on the
internet is. Everything else is caveat emptor.
In a nutshell, without any input from the guys, and my pure speculation
is you made that quarter of a million plus buck purchase and then tried
to return 2/3 of it within the permissible window given to a bunch of
guys used to dealing with new collectors purchasing $100 items for
which they work night and day giving free lessons. If I read between
the lines (and I have ZERO knowledge of this from the dealers) you felt
you were overcharged. No doubt some other dealer told you that as he
vied for the sale and your confidence and crapped bricks when he heard
the amounts at stake. Dealers are like that behind closed doors - they
eat each other for lunch for two orders of magnitude less. I'd like to
invite you to come to the Tucson mineral show to assess this. And we
all know that once a customer looses that "lovin feeling" for a rock,
it's history. Why else would you agree to keep 8 of the 9 and just
return the most expensive one and tell them to send you half of the
cost of the second most expensive one back…?
For reasons we do not know, once the sale was poisoned, it looks like a
dispute developed between the selling partners which resulted in your
return/refund not being a deliverable, not honored. You then got pissed
off at them and involved the IMCA which reticently fulfilled their
obligation in accordance with your contract as you have described it.
It comes down to a simple escape clause you had that wasn't honored?
Correct? I beg you do not assail the authenticity of their stones
unless you can point something out that was fake; quality is ambiguous
in this situation if they are authentic: then they are authentic. Or
is there a hidden defect such as glue, cracks, etc. Rake them over the
coals as you deem fit, but the ramifications of alleging fakery go much
beyond baseless suspicions of parties in a dispute; the effect is to
put the entire meteorite world in serious turmoil and we all lose, just
like the scare of the US defaulting on its debt - it is a cascade
effect through everyone's collection and rumors are deadly and hurt us
all since the community with the good material is so tightly knit.
To put it in perspective, however, it would be instructive to know
whether it was simply an issue of differing expectations regarding
returning your money among the selling associates, or if there were
some special requests you required to modify (cut, polish, etc) the
stones transforming them into something else. That would explain why
they didn't allow the return, but it wouldn't explain why you were
apparently promised it was returnable.
Alternately, and what I suspect, perhaps it was originally from Morocco
and most of the cash went there to release the stone and can't be
recovered. None of this is your concern given you owned the escape
clause; however it would speak volumes on how such a sad situation
could shock us by occurring. No one selling meteorites that I know has
terrific cash flow and sometimes companies make risky decisions based
on optimism that lead to insolvency and inability to honor their
unsettled liabilities. That doesn’t make them unethical, it just makes
them foolish businessmen. With that magnitude, don’t you wish you only
offered X% up front and Y% upon satisfaction? Of course that has
nothing to do with your contract, but this sort of thing could happen
anywhere and this is nothing you failed to do - only a bitter
contemplation to theoretically have avoided the catastrophe. Imagine
buying a house with a cashier’s check for the full amount from a bunch
of in-laws in partnership ...escrow comes to mind to avoid temptation.
Good luck to you all. Today is seriously the most terrible day in
meteoritidum I've ever had - a nightmare. I hope beyond all odds that
something good comes with it for all those who have been burned. The
meteorites sound absolutely astounding. As a last resort, I have a
cardboard sign with magic marker written, “I werk for unwanted orphan
Lunar meatyites” ;-)
Kindest wishes
Doug
-----Original Message-----
From: Naveen Jain <nav...@intelius.com>
To: 'MexicoDoug' <mexicod...@aim.com>
Cc: meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com
Sent: Tue, Aug 2, 2011 12:02 am
Subject: RE: Martin & Stefan Kicked out of IMCA for their illegal
behavior
Doug,
I am still in shock because I expected the meteorite community to be
small,
friendly and ethical. I have had wonderful experience purchasing,
learning
and getting guidance from Martin Horejsi, Adam Hupe, Greg Hupe, Michael
Farmer and others.
Martin Altman and Stefan got blinded by the large $$$ sale and couldn’t
control their greed. They sold all of their ethics, morals and even the
sense of unlawful activities for $264K.
I commend IMCA board members for taking the ethics violation seriously.
They
spent countless hours investigating the complaint and concluded that
Stefan
and Martin needed to honor their obligations. See below email from
president
of IMCA so you can see the facts. This is not my personal opinion of
fraud
committed by Stefan and Martin Altman but this the opinion of 8 reputed
meteorite community leaders on the board of IMCA. Here are the string of
emails from Anne Black (President of IMCA) that speak for themselves:
=========================================================================
From: Impactika [mailto:impact...@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 1:18 PM
To: Naveen Jain
Cc: j...@meteorites.com.au
Subject: Re: Update
Hello Naveen,
Ok, we are done.
Martin was voted off the Board last week. Then we asked for his
resignation
from the IMCA. He asked for a few days to think about it, then this
morning
he emailed us that he was resigning.
I am still very sorry that we could not get to an amicable resolution of
this dispute, I really hoped......., but in the end we were giving very
little choice.
Thanks you for your patience.
Anne Black
===================================================================
From: Impactika [mailto:impact...@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 12:28 PM
To: altm...@meteorite-martin.de; Naveen Jain
Subject: Complaint: Last attempt at a solution
Naveen and Martin,
Thank you for all the documentation you have both sent to us. We have
reviewed it carefully, discussed it within the Board of Directors and we
have voted on it. And we are now ready to act on this complaint.
However, to be absolutely fair to both of you, we would like to give
you one
last chance to resolve this dispute with a mutually acceptable
compromise.
Going through the documentation we have isolated three options that have
been suggested by either one of you at one time or another. These 3
options
are listed below.
Please look at them carefully and do let us know if there is anyway you
might agree on either one of them.
Let's give it a couple days for both of you to think about it, but if
you
tell us that no compromise is possible, then we are certainly ready to
publish the decision we have reached in accordance with the ByLaws of
the
IMCA.
1)Return Kreep lunar for $124,387 and Green lunar for $54,152. Total
$178,539.
2) Keep green lunar but return lunar Kreep for what was paid ($124,387)
and
refund 25K from the price of green lunar. Total refund: $149,387.
3) Return all meteorites for a full refund.
Thank you for your patience and your cooperation.
Copy sent to the Board of Directors
Anne M. Black
www.IMPACTIKA.com
impact...@aol.com
President of IMCA
www.IMCA.cc
=========================================================================
===
=
From: Impactika [mailto:impact...@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 1:24 PM
To: Naveen Jain
Cc: stefan ralew; altm...@meteorite-martin.de
Subject: Dispute Resolution
Hello,
I am sorry to have to admit that the resolution is not what we were
hoping
for.
Stefan Ralew has informed us that he is the legal owner of "Chladni's
Heirs", as proven by the fact that your payments were sent to him and
that
the invoices came directly from him, not from Martin Altmann. Therefore
he
is the only one entitled to making any business decisions.
Further Stefan Ralew has resigned from the International Meteorite
Collectors Association, and has made it very clearly that any efforts
from
the IMCA regarding this dispute were not welcome.
Therefore, working strictly within the framework of the IMCA ByLaws,
there
is nothing further we can do.
Again I am very sorry we were not able to help you reach a mutually
acceptable compromise.
Thank you for your patience.
Anne M. Black
www.IMPACTIKA.com
impact...@aol.com
President of IMCA
www.IMCA.cc
=========================================================================
===
==
Naveen Jain
Founder - Moon Express, Intelius, InfoSpace
Board of Trustee – X Prize Foundation, Singularity University
http://www.linkedin.com/in/naveenjainintelius
From: MexicoDoug [mailto:mexicod...@aim.com]
Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 7:49 PM
To: Naveen Jain
Subject: OFF LIST: Martin & Stefan
Hello again Naveen -
I am very sorry to learn about your problem. Shocked is more like it.
I have always held Martin and Stefan in high esteem and honestly so you
know have considered them friends.
It is a shock that this would have happened. Though I am friendly with
them, business is business and I would never mix the two. I have made
several purchases from Martin and Stefan, some appreciable in amount
and I am sure it is about $10K in total over the years.
I would like to hear the story to be able to form my own opinion of
what happened. It is very important to me to know that I am dealing
with ethical people, even those that are/were friends. Sometimes
friends can be terrible business associates, something I have run into
in the past. So please give me the detailed information. I will keep
it confidential - doesn't matter, and I'll be sure to give you my
personal and confidential take on it if you ask in return for the
information.
And they are bigger fools than I though to mess with you, perhaps they
didn't know who they were dealing with.
Kindest wishes
Doug
-----Original Message-----
From: Naveen Jain <nav...@intelius.com>
To: meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com
Sent: Mon, Aug 1, 2011 9:57 pm
Subject: [meteorite-list] Stefan Ralew and Martin Altman kicked out of
IMCA for illegal activities
I just got the conformation from president of IMCA, Anne Black, that
Stefan
Ralew and Martin Altman are no longer member of IMCA.
As you may already know, Stefan and Martin were systematically engaged
in
mail fraud and wire fraud. I was one of their many victims and decided
to
file a complaint against them with IMCA since they were both members of
IMCA. Martin Altman had lured me in by lots of stuff by telling me that
he
was a board member of IMCA and I can return anything that I don't want
or
like.
I have to thank IMCA board members for their diligent effort in
investigating the complaint. IMCA board members unanimously concluded
that
Stefan and Martin needed to honor their obligations and act ethically
as a
member of IMCA. IMCA board laid out options for Stefan and Martin to
honor
their obligation. They were essentially asked to stop engaging in
unethical
and illegal behavior.
See below is my official complaint to IMCA. As I said, IMCA thoroughly
investigated the complaint and IMCA board unanimously voted to force
them to
honor their obligation of full refund.
I strongly suspect that Stefan and Martin either sent me the either
fake or
low quality meteorite and were afraid to give the refunds for the
garbage
that they sold me under deceit and fraud of promising full refund with
clear
intent of not honoring the obligation.
I am sending this note to warn all meteorite collectors to watch out so
they
don't become their next victim. I will be happy to provide more details
if
anyone wants it. I have consulted my legal counsel and probably will
file
lawsuit to avoid them from profiting from their illegal activities. I
may
also contact my friends at FBI to investigate their mail and wire fraud
scam.
----- Original Message -----
From: "I.M.C.A. International Meteorite Collectors Association"
<questi...@imca.cc>
To: <complai...@imca.cc>
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 10:18 AM
Subject: IMCA Complaints
Your Name: Naveen Jain
Your E-Mail: nav...@intelius.com
Are you an IMCA member?: no
Message: I am a new collector and purchased 9 meteorite specimens from
Martin Altman (director of IMCA). Martin touted his being a director
of
IMCA to give me comfort and entice me to buy it from him. I
specifically
asked him if I will be able to return any item that I didn't like and
he
said that it's their normal practice and part of the German consumer
protection law (see email from him below). The return policy on their
website also clearly states the same i.e. a customer can return any
item
within 30 days for a full refund. i contacted them within 24 hours of
my
receiving the items that I want to return 2 of the 9 specimens that I
received. They are now refusing to return the item and refund my
money. I
am now being told that I am somehow a business customer and my order
that
was sold from their stock as shown on their website is somehow a
custom
order because it was packed for shipping to US.
I will like to refund everything to them if they have problem
returning 2
out of 9 orders.
Here is the email from Martin Altman:
From: Martin Altmann [mailto:altm...@meteorite-martin.de]
Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2011 3:37 PM
To: Naveen Jain
Subject: AW: Few thoughts..
Hi Naveen,
As we discussed in the past, I am assuming that you will happily
return
any of the meteorite that I don't like after I look at them for a full
refund.
Nja."happily". perhaps not :-) ;
But of course that is our business standard.
And btw. here in Germany we have a strong consumers protection. By
law we
would be obligated to take back everything sold via internet, if the
buyer
returns it within 3 weeks.
Warm regards,
Naveen
Naveen Jain
Founder - Moon Express, Intelius, InfoSpace
Board of Trustee - X Prize Foundation, Singularity University
http://www.linkedin.com/in/naveenjainintelius
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